Half a Loaf

After over 90 days of agonizing, President Obama finally made his decision on Afghanistan this week. Over 3 months after General McChrystal asked for 40,000 troops to support his strategy to reverse the gains made by the Taliban, President Obama agreed to send ¾ of the requested troop levels. This is the first major decision by Barack Obama for which he will be held accountable, and, coincidentally, was made in about the same amount of time it took to pick the Obama family dog. We’ll see how he does when real events force Obama to make a decision in less than 90 days.
Is this a good decision or not? I have no way of knowing, but I am skeptical. McChrystal is on the ground and in the best position to know whether 40,000 is the right number. It may very well be that the job simply cannot be accomplished with 30,000 and we might as well pack up and go home. Often, the outcomes of these types of decisions are more like step functions. 40,000 may be the minimum needed to be successful.
But leaving that aside for a moment, announcing to the world that you plan we plan to exit in 2011 risks negating much of the benefit of the surge. We are fighting an enemy whose very strength is the ability to ebb and flow, disappear for long periods of time and then re-emerge. They have more tolerance for a long, drawn out affair than we do. If I were a Taliban leader, my message would be, “Akhmed, take a sabbatical for awhile. Go find a little fishing hold in Western Pakistan. We’ll see you in about 14 months and we can shoot a few Americans in the back as they are packing up.” So, by setting a goal of leaving rather than winning, it is more likely that we will have wasted blood and treasure and much of Afghanistan will be back in Taliban hands within 36 months.
I also find it highly ironic that Obama and the Dems fought Bush tooth and nail against the surge in Iraq, declared Iraq lost and we are now employing precisely the same strategy in Afghanistan.
Still, I have to give him some credit. Nearly a year in and Obama has yet to make a decision that leans hard against the left wing faithful. This is as close as he has come so far. With the Democrats almost certain to take a thumping in the midterm elections, Obama will need to get more comfortable with governing from somewhere closer to the middle. This is almost a certain result, even if we have to drag him kicking and screaming.